Page 212 of His Pretty Little Duet

Sadness spreads through my veins like acid. “Clay didn’t know,” I mutter aloud, and they look at me as though I’ve spouted another head. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

“He didn’t want to know,” Max spits out.

“That is not true!” Clay curses through gritted teeth. “What were the circumstances of this? What did you do to?—”

“Is there a situation”—Xander steps closer— “that would make locking me in a closet for two weeks a suitable punishment from a mother to a child?”

“No.” Clay drops his hands from my shoulders altogether, balling them into tight, white-knuckled fists. “I only mean that?—”

“Would it be a suitable punishment to drown your child if they broke something?” Xander challenges.

“No.”

“Would it be excusable if she was drunk, not in her right mind?”

“Of course not!”

Xander’s eyes fill with tears. “Then why do you need the circumstances and reasons for why this happened?—”

“Because that is how I handle things, goddamn it!” Clay shouts, and I jump to my feet.

Turning to touch his shoulder for support, I feel the powerful muscles that are hot, pulsing, and ready. Clay Butcher, a man whose control is unparalleled, sounds and feels as though he may be breaking down.

Clay glances over his shoulder at me, his eyes dropping to my abdomen. “Your brothers will only get in your way,” he utters, and it’s a sentence lost in a memory that sparks through his gaze like wildfire. His eyes shift to Xander again. “You didn’t tell me.”

“The bruises didn’t give it away?” Xander asks, his voice low and broken, forcing my heart to squeeze.

I picture her talking to me by the pool, interrogating me. Needing to please, like always, I thought she was like Clay. Just guarded. Unreadable. Maybe slightly bitter due to her hardships. No.

I was wrong.

I touch my lower belly.

I don’t want her anywhere near you, sweet baby.

“I presumed you’d been in fights,” Clay says angrily, his tone laced with confusion and regret. Then he bites out, “Fuck,”to himself.

Bronson nods once as he says, “So did everyone else.”

“And you didn’t fight back,” Clay states to himself more than to his brothers. “You let her hurt you?”

Bronson hums. “What would you have us do, beautiful brother? Hit our pretty mother back?”

“Butch doesn’t know,” Max says curtly. “We keep it that way. No one knows. No one needs to know.”

Clay nods stiffly and reaches for Xander, who is losing his battle to stifle his anguish. The honesty rips through him. The truth bleeds out as they embrace.

Xander buries his head. “I wanted to tell you so many times. I wanted to go to you so many times.”

Clay holds his little brother, and it. All. Comes. Out. A flood of sentiment, the captive feeling he masks so well, the need to remain strong, to make them strong, all flowing from him.

“I wasn’t there for you.” Clay’s voice is strained. “I know. I’ll make it up to you… If you’ll let me.”

Both men shake slightly as the moment passes between them. A significant moment that binds their pasts, the fork that divided them slowly being bridged. I thought they had him on a pedestal, and maybe they did, but more than that, Clay’s brothers thought he was unreachable, unreasonable, uncaring, maybe… Maybe he was… until now.

Bronson moves over to their shoulders. “I’m getting jelly,” he mocks, hiding his raw response within humour, but Clay doesn’t have his armour up anymore. He isn’t suited and smooth. He’s confused, and I bet confusion in a man like Clay Butcher stokesintensity. He cares, showing this by dragging Bronson into the huddle.

“I’m proud of you,” he says to him. “You were the better big brother.” He chokes on the words. “You were the right one.”

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